I missed game 2 but game 1 was amazing. That wasn't even the best the Wings could play and they still won 3-1. That third goal by Abdelkader was a fantastic play on his part, just snatching the puck outta the air. Go Wings!! Repeat in 4!

I love the Wings as much as you all do and want them to win, but let's not go crowning them champs just yet. The reality is that both of these games have gone back and forth, and the Wings have gotten a few good bounces. If any of the 6 shots that hit the post went in for the Pens, we'd be talking about an entirely different series. That's a margin of error of about an inch from being a goal. At times, the Wings have outplayed the Pens, and at times the Pens have outplayed the Wings. Don't forget, Pittsburgh is outshooting Detroit. That rarely ever happens. Until Detroit wins one on the road, nothing is for sure. As the old saying goes, the series doesn't really start until the home team loses.

I say Wings in 5. Pitt wins the next one on a gritty, home-ice performance, and the Wings close out at home.

_________________"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

June 1st, 2009, 2:51 pm

Yzermanx3

Walk On

Joined: April 5th, 2006, 5:04 pmPosts: 400Location: Rosebush Michigan

I truly hope they can close it out at home. Winning the next game in pittsy is crucial. Much rather see a home ice celebration.

Terry Foster / The Detroit NewsDetroit -- There will be no "Joe Vision" broadcast of Tuesday night's Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals because NBC would not rescind its exclusive rights to the telecast.

The game will not be shown at Pittsburgh's outdoor plaza either.

At issue is television ratings, and a large crowd at Joe Louis Arena could be hundreds -- if not thousands -- of television sets not tuned in to NBC.

"It is certainly something we wanted to show but were unable to secure the rights," said Steve Violetta, Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for the Wings.

"We are very much in tune and very sensitive to the great experience that fans have by coming to a great venue and watching a great hockey game," Brown said. "That said we need to be sensitive to the business end of things and that business is ratings driven."

As much as I want to see them win it at home I'll take another victory in Pittsburg.

Crosby is such a dirty player. I have a new most hated professinal athelete. If thats what you call the terd....

Personally, I wouldn't call Crosby a dirty player but I also don't think he's acting the way a Captain should. If someone is looking for a reason why the Pens "lost it" the other night, look no further than Sid the Kid. After his slash on Hank, it really all went downhill. The team followed what their "Captain" showed them.

_________________

Quote:

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

June 9th, 2009, 11:48 am

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12278

Freep wrote:

June 9, 2009Jilted last year, it's Marian Hossa's turn to dance

BY DREW SHARPFREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Marian Hossa doesn't talk about the sweetest of ironies -- winning the Stanley Cup against the team he spurned last summer for less money but a better opportunity. But he can't ignore it. Nobody can. It's the two-ton elephant in Mellon Arena tonight.

"I can only imagine how difficult it might be for Hoss," teammate Kirk Maltby said. "You're this close, playing your former team in their building with the chance to win your first Stanley Cup a year after you were on the other side. You don't see situations like that happen every day."

What a scene it would be if the Wings wrap it up tonight and captain Nicklas Lidstrom honors Hossa with the privilege of the first Stanley Cup handoff. How would Penguins fans react?

How would Hossa's fellow players feel upon the realization that celebrating collectively means as much, if not more, than profiting individually?

Hossa has gotten a bad rap. His rejection of long-term contracts with the Penguins and Edmonton for the Wings' one-year, $7.5-million deal infuriated players across the league -- and their agents -- because it established a precedent that general managers could use in contract negotiations, wondering why guys can't be more like Marian.

But a Stanley Cup would give the soft-spoken Hossa the chance to tell all who disagreed with his motives where to stick it.

"You can only control what you can control, so why bother worrying about what some people might say," Hossa said Monday. "You're never going to make everybody happy, so you have to be happy with the decision that you made. Coming here has been a great learning experience for me."

What Hossa learned most this season was the necessity of camaraderie. Hossa has learned the value of contributing without scoring. That's difficult for a sniper who instinctively measures his worth through shots taken and goals scored.

He's proud that he led the Wings with eight hits in Game 5.

"I thought he was very, very good in Game 5 for us -- very physical, hard on the puck" coach Mike Babcock said Monday. "That's what we'll challenge him to do again."

Winning tonight would be a dream come true for Hossa. He was on the desperate side of a 3-2 series deficit a year ago when the Stanley Cup came to Mellon Arena. He came oh, so close to forcing overtime in the final second of regulation, his frantic attempt harmlessly hugging the goal line.

PITTSBURGH — In the final, maddening seconds, the Red Wings had their goalie off the ice, the other goalie out of his net, Johan Franzen in front, slamming his stick, and only Pittsburgh defenseman Rob Scuderi playing netminder, spread on the ice, kick-saving the game, maybe the series, maybe the whole fate of the 2009 championship. The Wings stuffed the crease, then the net, one player, two, three, it looked like college kids trying a phone booth stunt. But players don’t change the scoreboard, only pucks do.

And this one didn’t.

All the way to the edge.

“We had some chances,” Nicklas Lidstrom told NBC after the 2-1 heart-thumping defeat that tied the finals at 3-3. “We couldn’t … get the second goal.”

So now it’s a bounce, a bad call, a ricochet. The Stanley Cup will be decided in a Game 7, and Game 7’s are often decided on such things. The Wings have as good a shot of winning as they have of losing, but what they don’t have any more is options.

On Tuesday, Detroit mostly played like a team that had another chance. Pittsburgh played like a team that didn’t.

And now they both don’t.

All the way to the edge.

Ozzie kept it so close

Let’s be honest. The Wings lost this thing by a 2-1 score, but it could have been 4-1 or 6-1 if not for Chris Osgood’s amazing efforts. Until a surge in the third period, the Wings were like a car trying to start on a cold morning, like a dancer trying to jump without warming up. The Penguins lived in their zone. They took their sweaters and tried them on. The Wings didn’t hit but they got hit, they didn’t sustain much pressure but they faced buckets of it, they got outhustled, they got squeezed, and, finally, they got stung.

Yes, there should have been a penalty called on Ruslan Fedotenko for jamming his stick between Lidstrom’s legs, keeping him from getting to a puck that wound up on Tyler Kennedy’s stick for the game-winner.

Yes, Dan Cleary had a great chance, late in the game, to tie the thing on a breakaway, and just held too long, jamming it into the pads of Marc-Andre Fleury instead of lighting the red light.

Yes, Pavel Datsyuk played great. Yes, they were charging hard at the end. Yes, yes, yes — and no. That doesn’t make up for the first two periods. The Wings knew the Penguins were going to come out hard, but at times they still seemed overwhelmed. They are too smart and too experienced to be swarmed like that — unless the Penguins are simply that good a team.

And maybe we should recognize that they are. Remember, Pittsburgh was coming off a 5-0 shellacking in Detroit. The Pens could have played turtle, hidden in their shell. Instead, they came out angry, as if Game 5 were an insult yelled at their family name.

“We got it out of our system, ” Sidney Crosby told the CBC.

But they can’t get Game 7 out of Joe Louis Arena. They haven’t won there yet. And if ever the Wings need to rely on a building, home fans and bouncy boards, the time is now — or rather Friday night.

Home cooking needed now

Although the final score was tantalizingly close, you never had the feeling the Wings were in charge of this game. As Mike Babcock admitted: “I thought they were better than us from the start of the game for probably the first 32 minutes. They won more races and more battles.”

The Wings, too often, gave up the puck in the neutral zone and found themselves spinning backward and playing defense. The shots after two periods were 24-12 in favor of Pittsburgh. That shouldn’t happen against the Wings. I don’t care what building they’re in.

So now, it’s a one-game season. One game for the whole thing. Pittsburgh must be taken very seriously here, because this team has returned from a 0-2 deficit already in these playoffs and clobbered Washington in a Game 7 on the road. It already has established that it is better than last year’s version, which went out in six games.

Then again, as Henrik Zetterberg noted to NBC, “It’s kind of similar feeling to last year. We lost Game 5 going in and refocused and found energy to play a good game. We have to do it at home instead.”

Emphasis on the words “have to.” The options are gone. It’s all the way to the edge now. Take a deep breath. A very deep breath.

There is no measuring this. The distance between winner and loser tonight is wider than any canyon or crater, as vast as space or time. One team forever will be engraved on the Stanley Cup for 2009, and one team never will be. So there's your distance: between never and forever.

If that weren't enough to make your knees wobble in Game 7, imagine Chris Osgood. At 36, perhaps no player has as many chips on the table as the Red Wings' goalie. He has played marvelously throughout the playoffs, and for the six previous finals games has been at least very good and at times incredible. He finishes each contest with the same calculated shrug and even-keeled voice and comments about this being "fun," no added pressure, what he plays for, etc.

Even so, should Osgood be reading this, I would ask him to stop now, put it down and go romp with the kids or wander around the makeshift rink he built in his large backyard.

Because it's not a stretch to think that a victory tonight, with a good performance by Osgood, secures him: 1) a fourth Stanley Cup, 2) a Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs, 3) a historic footnote as the goalie who stymied Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and 4) the Hockey Hall of Fame.

And if the Wings lose, he might not get any of that.

How's that for pressure?

Time could be running out

"It's gonna be fun," Osgood said of Game 7, after the loss in Pittsburgh. "It's been a heck of a series."

And if Ozzie plays lights-out tonight, it is hard to imagine the Wings losing it. He has not surrendered more than one goal to the Penguins in the three home games -- and shut them out in Game 5. Marc-Andre Fleury never has played particularly well in Joe Louis Arena, and with the waves of talent the Wings can send down the ice -- especially with Pavel Datsyuk back in gear -- they are not likely to be blanked.

Still, it's funny, Wings fans never really think about Osgood as a guy who can stand on his head and virtually win a game by himself. They thought of Dominik Hasek that way. But Dom won two Cups with the Wings; Ozzie is going for his fourth. Tonight would cap a masterpiece.

Or not. If the Wings miss out, if they drop this series, the taste on their lips will be terribly bitter. They were up, 2-0. They clobbered the Pens in Game 5 for a 3-2 lead. Despite their experience, they would be the only team in these finals to drop a home game.

And Osgood would be right to wonder if another chance would come his way. He will be 37 this fall. He struggled through this regular season, had to make adjustments to rejuvenate himself, and with young teams like Chicago and Pittsburgh only getting better, you want to grab the ring while you have a chance.

And then there's the Hall of Fame thing. It may be silly to debate it at this point, but Osgood never has received the respect that would make him a sure thing. Look at the stars he played with, his critics argue. When did he do it by himself?

A résumé worth framing

Well, a victory in this series would silence that. "Absolutely," Don Cherry, the guru of "Hockey Night in Canada," told me Wednesday. "Are you kidding? With all those rings, if he steps up? Of course he's a Hall of Famer. And he will win the MVP of this series."

But only if he steps up -- and the Wings win. If not, the MVP likely goes to Malkin, and Osgood is left with a few shadows. Not here. I am convinced of his Hall of Fame credentials already. But others -- outside of Detroit -- still will be on the fence. A Conn Smythe and a ring would blow them off.

So there is no measuring this. What hangs in the balance tonight, Game 7, the last hockey game of the season -- for all the players, and for Osgood in particular -- is simply everything that separates winning from losing in sports, photos that hang on your walls or don't, magazine covers you keep or throw out, banners or no banners, parade or no parade, a Cup in your hands or your hands dropped and empty.

Free Press sports columnist Michael Rosenberg will chat with readers at 4:30 p.m. Friday at freep.com/sports. Hit Mike with your best questions about the Wings and the rest of the Detroit sports scene.

Join Free Press sports writer Shawn Windsor for the live-blog of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals between the Red Wings and the Penguins. We'll get things started shortly before the 8 p.m. start

Personally, I think so, but then again, admittedly, I'm not really sure what qualifys one for the Hockey HOF. I'd like to think that (as of right now) 3 Cups and (I believe) the best record as a goalie in Finals history should could for something.

Your thoughts?

_________________

Quote:

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

June 12th, 2009, 10:22 am

buell17

Afghan Allstar

Joined: January 9th, 2006, 1:16 pmPosts: 564Location: San Diego, CA

Tough loss tonight. You can't play Red Wings style hockey for 24 minutes and expect to hoist the Cup.

_________________So many nights I just dream of the ocean, God I wish I was sailing again.

What can be said? it is over...Hossa is out again..Ozzie has 3 rings and currently 10th on all time wins..many think he is not a HoF, but I do. The Wings down played the injuries, but we took a beating going into the finals. The non-calls, example 6 players on the ice for 30 seconds drove me nuts..Crosby was invisible because of our D, but some of our guys were also MIA. Malkin is a punk..he needs to get his rectum kicked next time he plays at the Joe..now we feel what the Pens fans went through last year. Next year will be the rubber match..